The Significance of Christmas

Portrait of Mary Baker Eddy by John Nelson Marble, which hangs in the New Hampshire Statehouse, from the collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society, 1917. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society. Photograph copyright The Mary Baker Eddy Library.

The December 10, 1905 edition of the New York World published a section titled, "The Significance of Christmas." A number of religious authors from various denominations published their views about Christmas. The following text is by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy:

"Certain occasions, considered collectively, individually, and observed properly, tend to give the activity of man infinite scope; but mere merry making or needless gift giving is not that wherein human capacities find the most appropriate and proper exercise. Christmas respects the Christ too much to submerge itself in merely temporary means and ends. It represents the eternal informing Soul recognized only in harmony, in the beauty and bounty of Life everlasting,—the truth that is Life,—the Life that heals and saves mankind. An eternal Christmas would make matter an alien save as phenomenon, and matter would reverentially withdraw itself before Mind. The despotism of material sense, or the flesh, would flee before such reality to make room for substance, and the shadow of frivolity and inaccuracy of material sense would disappear.

"Christmas, in Christian Science, stands for the real, the absolute and eternal,—the things of Spirit, not matter. Science is divine; it hath no partnership with human means and ends, no half-way stations, nothing conditional or material belongs to it. Human reason and philosophy may pursue paths devious, the line of liquids, the lure of gold, the doubtful sense that falls short of substance—the things hoped for and evidence unseen.

"The basis of Christmas is the Rock, Christ Jesus; its fruits, inspiration and spiritual understanding of joy and rejoicing; not because of tradition, usage, or corporeal pleasures, but because of fundamental and demonstrable truth, the heaven within us. It is love loving its enemies, returning good for evil, that suffereth long and is kind. It elevates medicine to Mind, it casts out evils, heals the sick, raises the dormant faculties, appeals to all conditions, and supplies every need of man. It leaves hygiene, medicine, ethics, and religion to God and His Christ, to that which is the Way, in word and in deed,—the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

"Hitherto there is but one Jesus Christ on record. Christ is incorporeal. Neither the you nor the I in the flesh can be or is Christ."

Mary Baker Eddy

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H.

Republished in the December 16, 1905 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel: https://sentinel.christianscie...

Later republished in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany: My. 259:21-260:32

George Reed can be reached at newhampshire@compub.org www.linkedin.com/in/georgereedcsb